Male Chinese student decapitates female Chinese student in Virginia Tech coffee shop

Read carefully the first paragraph of the article, which is by the Associated Press. Note the low-key, matter of fact way the reporter lets us know that the decapitation took place in a campus cafe, meaning that it happened in a public place in front of other students. Then observe that in the rest of the article, there is no description of the actual murder and decapitation, even though we’re told that there were seven witnesses.The more shocking and horrifying a crime is, especially when it’s by a nonwhite or someone who may be Muslim, the more it is routinized and suppressed, as we saw in the case of the decapitation of Patrick McGee last December in Manchester, England.

BLACKSBURG, Virginia (AP)—A graduate student from China was decapitated with a kitchen knife in a campus cafe at Virginia Tech by another graduate student who knew her, police said Thursday.

Xin Yang, 22, was killed Wednesday night after arriving at the campus from Beijing on Jan. 8 to begin studying accounting, Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said.

Her accused attacker, 25-year-old Haiyang Zhu of Ningbo, China, knew the victim but no motive for the slaying has been determined, Flinchum said. School records showed that Haiyang was listed as one of Xin’s emergency contacts.

Haiyang was charged with first-degree murder and was being held without bond at the Montgomery County Jail. His attorney, Stephanie Cox, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Haiyang and Xin had been having coffee in a cafe in the Graduate Life Center, where Xin was living. About seven other people who were in the coffee shop told police that the two hadn’t been arguing before the attack. [LA comments: That’s the closest the article gets to the actual murder. All we hear is that they weren’t arguing before the attack. Then, in the next paragraph, the story cuts to AFTER the attack with the police receiving the 911 call.]

Police received two 911 calls shortly after 7 p.m. Wednesday, Flinchum said, and were on the scene in a little more than a minute to take Haiyang into custody.

Flinchum said Haiyang was not known to the campus police or to the university team that deals with mentally disturbed students.

University officials said Haiyang arrived on campus last fall and was a Ph.D. student in agricultural and applied economics.

The stabbing was the first killing on campus since a mass killing on campus in 2007, when a student gunman shot 32 people and then took his own life. [LA adds: And of course, the mass killer of Virginia Tech was a Korean, Cho Seung-Hu.]

“An act of violence like this brings back memories of April 16,” university President Charles Steger said. “I have no doubt that many of us feel especially distraught.”

University spokesman Larry Hincker said a campus alert system put in place after the mass shootings by Seung-Hui Cho in 2007 sent out messages to 30,000 subscribers by e-mail, text messages and telephone voice mails Wednesday night.

Because a suspect was in custody, the messages were sent out as notifications rather than as emergency alerts, he said.

Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine offered condolences to the campus.

“My thoughts and prayers are with the friends and family of Xin Yang today—and with the broader Virginia Tech community,” he said in a statement. “The tragic attack on campus this week has no doubt revived terrible memories for countless members of the Hokie family.”

The accused killer, Haiyang Zhu, comes from Ningbo, China. There is a famous, 1,000 year old mosque in Ningbo, so at least some Muslims live there, but I don’t know if it is a predominantly Muslim area.

This is from a page on Ningbo Vacation Tour FAQ:

In Ningbo, one of the alleys contains the Qingzhen Mosque, which has served as the center of Ningbo’s community of Muslim traders for almost a thousand years. Originally constructed in 1003 AD, the current structure dates from 1699, and renovations in 1987 fixed as much as possible of extensive damage from the Cultural Revolution.

Now back to the news account. I looked for more articles, hoping to find information on the killing itself. I found another AP article, posted at 9 P.M Thursday, January 22. It gives more details on the victim and the killer and their relationship. They had met recently, since her arrival on campus January 8, and he was helping orient her to the campus. So there was some acquaintance. But when it comes to the murder itself, this more recent AP story performs the same trick as the first one:

What led to the attack is also a mystery: About seven other people who were in the coffee shop told police that the two hadn’t been arguing before the attack. Beisecker said there hadn’t been previous signs of trouble between them.

Police received two 911 calls shortly after 7 p.m. Wednesday, and were on the scene in a little more than a minute to take Zhu into custody, Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said.

Notice that break in the narrative? The young woman, Yang, and the young man, Zhu, are seen sitting together in the cafe, not arguing. Then the story jumps to the police getting the 9/11 call. What happened between the moment when the two were sitting there not arguing, and the 9/11 call? That period of time is lost. That event is gone. It doesn’t exist. The actual attack and murder, the decapitation of a young woman in a student union coffee shop in front of seven students, has been erased. The Orwellian thought control managers, excuse me, the journalists, have become very skilled at this. They simply skip over the actual crime, even though seven people saw it happen. It’s very much like the Daily Mail’s account of the murder of Patrick McGee, which doesn’t tell what happened to him other than the bare fact that he was beheaded. It doesn’t even tell what kind of weapon was used. The murder becomes a cipher, an abstractoin.

Meanwhile, the case of Vince Weiguang Li, the Greyhound decapitator of Manitoba, is moving toward trial in March. But only issues pertaining to Li’s state of mind are going to be discussed. The court will not hear any testimony from the witnesses on the bus. The decapitation of Tim McLean has become a medical event, without moral meaning.

From the story by The Canadian Press:

This coming March, Vince Li will go on trial in Winnipeg for second-degree murder before a judge alone. The only issue during the three-day trial will be Li’s state of mind….

None of those who witnessed the horror that night will be expected to relive the experience at Li’s trial. An agreed statement of facts will take care of the details of the attack.

Instead, the witnesses are expected to consist mainly of forensic psychiatrists who can speak about Li’s mental health.

“The defence or Crown can raise evidence that the person didn’t have the requisite mental intent, he didn’t have any malice,” Libman said. “In this type of situation, it would be that the person didn’t know that killing that person was wrong, either morally or legally … There was no attempt to conceal it, no attempt to run away.”

If Li is found not criminally responsible, he could be immediately discharged by the judge or hospitalized indefinitely depending on the seriousness of the crime. If he is ordered to undergo treatment, he would be reassessed regularly by a mental health review board.

“We don’t punish people if they didn’t intend to do something or if they honestly believed what they were doing was right because of an illness,” Libman said. “We don’t punish people who are not at fault. He would just be treated and get medical help.”

But for Carol deDelley, McLean’s mother, the prospect that the man charged in her son’s death might eventually be released is too much to bear. She, along with others, are already pushing for tougher laws to ensure that doesn’t happen.

“My son Timothy lost his life and our lives will never be the same without him being a part of it,” she said at a recent vigil to press for changes to legislation. “Myself and my family are seeking justice for Timothy (and) mercy for ourselves.”

So, since last July:

• Tim McLean of Manitoba, Canada, on July 30 was decapitated on a Greyhound bus by Vince Weiguang Li, who probably belongs to the Hui ethnic group, which is a Muslim ethnic group, and who is possibly from China’s Xinjaing Uyghur Autonomous Region, which is largely Muslim. But the mainstream English language media don’t report anything about Li’s background or religion. The public is left to guess whether he is a Muslim or not, and whether he was attending a mosque in the heavily Muslim city of Edmonton during the period prior to the murder.

• Patrick McGee of Manchester, England, on December 15 was beheaded in his front yard or in his living room by an unnamed man who according to an initial story in the Mail police thought was from the Philippines, but in the Mail’s revised article the mention of the suspect’s being Filipino is dropped and he’s described as mentally ill. The Philippines has a Muslim minority and a large Catholic majority. McGee is treated in the media as a cipher, an “elderly pensioner” (he was 63), who was a “nice” man, and beyond that his death is given no meaning. The details of the murder are never given. All that the police say about the suspect is that he is being checked for mental illness and therefore his name can’t be given. There is essentially one real newspaper article on the murder,and then the story disappears. (All VFR entries on this are here.)

• And now Xin Yang at Virginia Tech, Virginia, on January 21, 2009 is beheaded in a graduate student coffee shop by Haiyang Zhu of Ningbo, China which has a famous mosque. Beyond the bare abstract fact that the suspect beheaded the victim, both AP stories deliberately avoid telling what he actually did to her, how he cut her head off, and so on, The experience and reactions of the seven witnesses to the decapitation are not recounted.

And why are the beheadings bowdlerized out of the story, as they were in the Manchester and now in the Virginia murders? As I’ve said before about the Patrick McGee coverage, even if the killer was not a Muslim, a beheading reminds people of the fact that Muslims are commanded by their religion to behead non-Muslims and frequently actually do so. Further, leaving aside the Muslim issue, these beheadings were performed by nonwhites, in the Manchester case, by a Filipino, in the Virginia case, by a Chinese. The media are operating under Auster’s First Law of Majority-Minority Relations in Liberal Society, which states that the worse the behavior of minorities and non-Westerners, the more the behavior must be covered up or excused, and the more racist a white is for noticing it and thinking about it.

- end of initial entry -

Charles T. writes:

In the Canadian and the Virginian case, both men who decapitated their victims were still at the scene when the police arrived.

Both men are Chinese.

It would be interesting to know if they were from the same area in China.

Their religious faith—or lack of it—is paramount information.

It would also be interesting to know the results of blood tests—if they were ordered at all—on both men.

In the Manchester case and the Canadian case, the victims were white males. In the Virginia case, the victim is a Chinese female. In all three news stories, the tone is detached—even relaxed; with major facts about the case missing or downplayed. Regardless of who the victim is, decapitation stories are going to be immensely sanitized for tone and facts before presentation to the public.

These incidents fill me with loathing and horror. I find none of this present in the press stories. I do not even find it in Libman’s comments in the Canadian Press story. Perhaps Libman expressed it and it was not recorded in the story? Doubtful. We are living in dangerous times. The lives of innocent people are being sacrificed to the liberal doctrines of political correctness. Indeed, they have been sacrificed to the idols of today’s modern political age.

Karen writes from England:

Governments are afraid that the combination of economic depression (to give the current economic conditions their real name) and Third World immigrant barbarity will cause civil unrest among the native population. Therefore all is hushed up to a greater extent than even before. America’s transition to black rule will probably encourage more Third World aggression and even more cover ups.

Howard Sutherland writes:

Truly a sickening story. The crime itself is the most sickening and vicious. But also sickening is our Platonic Guardians of the Press’s determination to throw a blanket over anything that might actually explain it. Especially anything that might get the dulled natives asking why we accept these murderous misfits (Vince Li; Chai Vang, the Hmurdering Hmong; Cho Seung-hui, the Korean Killer of Va. Tech; and now this Oriental gentleman) in our midst.

The article is phrased so that some very basic questions should not even come to mind, much less be answered: Was the unfortunate woman killed before being beheaded? (If this had to happen at all, I hope so.) Did anyone attempt to intervene? I can’t imagine one can decapitate an adult human being with a kitchen knife very quickly—it doesn’t sound like we’re talking about a scimitar or samurai sword.

[LA replies: The question, was poor Yang Xin killed before the beheading or by it, is of tremendous human concern and interest. But liberals, for all their protestations about caring for humanity, don’t care about what happens to human beings, even minority human beings, if caring about them interferes with the Higher Liberal Directive that whites must never have any negative thoughts about minorities. Thus a murdered and beheaded minority individual has to be made into a non-person in order to protect minorities as a collective.

To put it another way, white liberals hate whites more than they love nonwhites.]

Disgusting to think about, and sad to reflect that, absent America’s insane immigration policies, these two Chinese would probably never have met.

Charles T. asks if these two Chinese choppers are from the same area of China. No. Haiyang Zhu (should be the other way round, I suspect) is from Ningpo, a port in Fukien on the southeastern China Coast. So Zhu is probably Fukien Chinese (who make up a disproportionate share of Chinese illegal aliens in the West, maybe because of their proximity to shipping). Weiguang Li (again, probably should be the other way round) is from Sinkiang. Sinkiang is historically not ethnically Chinese, although China has ruled it for centuries. I think you have speculated that Li may be a Hui, and likely a Moslem.

Laura W. writes:

Judging from the news stories, people are soothed by the idea that only unpredictable mental illness is involved, illness that calls for better health programs and occasional vigilance. I don’t think they want to know more. The student newspaper at Virginia Tech amazingly also has not interviewed any of the students who witnessed the beheading. There is much discussion on their site about why no one intervened in the attack. This is certainly one of the most stunning details of the story, suggesting a level of anomie and disengagement in modern society as horrifying as the crime itself.

One student comments on the site:

Posted by: Observant reader at Jan 22

In case you haven’t noticed, not many people are very remorseful around campus. Parties, attitudes, facebook statuses, etc. show that people really just don’t care. It’s truly sad, but apparently society can write off something when it is “isolated.” As for the weapons debate, its been going on for 6-7 years on this campus and will continue. Times like this remind us that self-defense is essential, and sometimes even defense of other innocent people. If you look back, that’s how the conversation on weapons got started here. But also, 7 people witnessed this horrible act but no one did anything. No one should blame them, but it’s likely that none of them had any training that would have helped. We’ve become “cozy” Americans and don’t think violence can affect us.. well, this is reality folks. Prepare for the worst, be ready for anything, and live a life devoid of fear.

Mark A. writes:

Don’t be silly. Don’t you know that this is a result of Virginia Tech’s lack of a culture of inclusion? This young man was acting out. It was a cry for help.

Paul Nachman writes:

This sentence from the Associated Press article you posted …

The stabbing was the first killing on campus since a mass killing on campus in 2007, when a student gunman shot 32 people and then took his own life.

… strikes me as intrinsically weird. The sentence is written as if murders on the campus are routine—it could be read as having an air of surprise that there’s been no murder on campus since 2007 until, finally, now.

Howard Sutherland writes:

I stand corrected! I just happened to see a map of China (we do a lot of China business here), and I noticed that Ningpo is not in Fukien, as I thought I remembered. It is in Chekiang, the next province up the coast north from Fukien. Close, but no cigah! Chekiang is the province that surrounds Shanghai. My apologies for misleading VFR’s readers.

For what it’s worth, Ningpo is also the home town of Chiang Kai-shek and Yo Yo Ma.

January 29

LA writes:

See two followup to this entry:

The media’s Orwellian downplaying and suppression of the Virginia Tech decapitation continues

The liberal media’s Orwellian method of non-coverage coverage

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 23, 2009 08:30 AM | Send